Why don't Jehovah's Witnesses accept blood transfusions?

Acts 15:19-21,28 is the Scripture Jehovah's Witnesses typically point to as the reason they refuse to accept blood donations. Acts 15:20 says, "Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood." It is clear from the context that the instructions were against eating / drinking blood, not blood transfusions. Blood transfusions were not even possible in Bible times, so there is no possibility that this Scripture could be referring to blood transfusions. There were many pagan religious practices that involved eating and drinking blood and/or strangling an animal to keep more of its blood in its meat. This is what the Bible speaks against, not blood transfusions.

Is it acceptable for a Christian to receive or give a blood transfusion? Since the Bible does not explicitly say, a decision of this nature can only be made between a person and God. One consideration might be that God created billions of people over the centuries, but only four blood types, making it possible to transfuse blood from one person to another, regardless of race or nationality. Perhaps this is an argument for the legitimacy of blood transfusions. A person should carefully and prayerfully consider what God would have them to do in regards to receiving / giving a blood transfusion. There is no command either way in Scripture. Blood transfusions are therefore a matter of conscience.

The obvious answer is to avoid the misuse of blood, which is strongly warned against in both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.

But aside from Bible reasons are the health reasons we can cite.

Searching the Internet for the subject of "bloodless medicine" or "bloodless surgery" will give ample medical reasons that a person needs to be aware of in the matter of blood transfusions or other treatments or medicines that include blood or part of blood.

Some products that take the place of blood or take the place of what blood would do now have a RECOMBINANT form - that is a man made form. A substitute if you will.

Factor VIII is one such part of the blood that is now 4th generation totally recombinant. This is used to treat hemophiliacs - even from newborns to old age.

My husband is a hemophiliac and one of Jehovah's Witnesses - and this NON-BLOOD product allows him to avoid using the real factor from blood which has definite risks (half of the hemophiliacs in the USA died from using it) - but it has allowed him to maintain a clean conscience from a religious viewpoint.

Research will help a person to find suitable substitutes for their particular medical needs.

And yes, there are many, many individuals out there who are avoiding the use of blood as a medical treatment, because they know the dangers inherent in such treatment.

When Noah came off the ark there was no vegetation so God gave him permission to eat animals. He explained however that Noah should pour the blood out upon the ground as the blood represented the life of the animal and was sacred to Him.

This commandment is repeated in the new testament when the "elders": of the church were asked to decide what the Gentile converts should do ( example, be circumcised ) They replied that it was only necessary to remain free of idols and blood. (The converts were already aware of the rules of Christianity)

As the bible says, "Let us reason together".

If the doctor told you that if you didn't stop drinking alcohol you would die, would it then be ok for you to take it by transfusion?.

God is telling you that if you show Him so much disrespect by drinking blood you will die. Is it then ok for you to take it by transfusion?

Jehovah's witnesses have information available concerning all the medical aspects of the use of blood, it's parts and medical procedures without using it and will be happy to give you a copy free of charge.

I know it says in the Bible not to eat meat with blood in it, but nothing about putting it in your body. Of course back then there probably wasn't such thing as blood transfusions. The obvious reasons to cook your meat we know today.

I believe there may be a plasma instead of blood that works similar, but I am not sure on this, and I can't see it replacing blood. If you lose to much blood you may have to either take a transfusion or die.

I am a Christian not a JW, so my answer it is coming from that perspective. I have had a transfusion myself because my blood levels were so low at one point.

I AM A JEHOVAH'S WITNESS.

Apart from Bible reasons, there are many reasons NOT to accept blood transfusions. Here are some helpful links as to why accepting blood transfusions poses great dangers. Also, there are alternatives to blood transfusions that are safe and acceptable.

(Acts 15:19-20,28) Hence my decision is not to trouble those from the nations who are turning to God, 20 but to write them to abstain from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood. 28 For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to YOU, except these necessary things.

There was not blood transfusions in the day this was written but I would ask what does the word abstain means: dictionary results, ab·stain /æbˈsteɪn/ Show Spelled[ab-steyn] Show IPA

–verb (used without object) 1. to hold oneself back voluntarily, especially from something regarded as improper or unhealthy.

People that call themselves Christian will eat blood sausage, these are those that the scriptures say honor with their mouth but their hearts are far removed from proper faith.

What happens when a person cant eat and they are in the hospital, they are fed intravenously and this is considered away to fortify the body, so is eating.

We take the scriptures seriously and when told to abstain we voluntarily hold back from excepting any form of blood(from man or animal) to be taken in to our bodies by means of eating or being directly injected into our blood.

Ours is a faith reason because we do not want to voluntarily disobey our God Jehovah, there are many health reason that we are benefited by abstaining from blood and there are more and more hospitals that are offering bloodless surgery and even the military are having their doctors learn bloodless surgery.

One newsman(lady) said that one day we may be thanking the Jehovah's Witnesses as paving the road to better surgery as the pioneers of bloodless surgery.

If you research this topic you will find the statistics of surgery's with and without blood are very close with the bloodless surgery's patients recovering faster with no complications of infection that is common with surgery involving the use of blood transfusion.

If you are to weigh matters relating to your health and life, or that of your family, how much risk do such diseases pose? Even doctors cannot say, because death from these diseases can occur long after a transfusion is given. Take as an example just one type of hepatitis (B), for which screening is only partially successful. :

“In 1982, some 200,000 Americans came down with hepatitis B, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta; 15,000 people were hospitalized due to the acute stage of the illness, and 112 died. Another 4,000 victims died from chronic complications attributed to the disease.”

How many others in Italy, Germany, Japan and elsewhere have died of hepatitis caused by transfusions? Yes, death from transfusions is a serious risk to be weighed.

Also in the risk/benefit ratio of transfusions, the risk is growing. “As our knowledge increases,” stated Professor Giorgio Veneroni (of Milan) in May 1982, “we are finding an ever greater number of risks connected with homologous blood transfusions.” One discovery causing alarm among doctors is form of hepatitis known as non-A non-B hepatitis, says The New York Times, afflicts “120,000 Americans each year, about 90,000 of whom contract the disease through blood transfusions.” “More than 1,000 of the victims die each year,” adds the report. Recently U.S. scientists succeeded in identifying a virus that causes this form of the disease. Scientists will now be able to study the virus closely. They hope to develop a method of screening contaminated blood and possibly even develop a hepatitis vaccine. But, as yet, the disease is untreatable. Dr. Robert J. Gerety of the Food and Drug Administration told The Times that “about 10 percent of all individuals who received five or more units of transfused blood become infected with the non-A non-B virus.”

AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), which has an extremely high death rate

What are the greatest transfusion-related threats to patients in developed countries? Errors and immunologic reactions. Regarding a 2001 Canadian study, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported that thousands of blood transfusions involved near-misses because of “collecting blood samples from the wrong patient, mislabelling samples and requesting blood for the wrong patient.” Such mistakes cost the lives of at least 441 people in the United States between 1995 and 2001.

Those who receive blood from another person face risks essentially similar to those undergoing an organ transplant. Immune responses tend to reject foreign tissue. In some cases, blood transfusions can actually prevent the activation of natural immune responses. Such immunosuppression leaves the patient vulnerable to postoperative infections and to viruses that had previously been inactive. It is no wonder that Professor Ian M. Franklin, quoted at the outset of this article, encourages clinicians to “think once, twice and three times before transfusing patients.”

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Jehovah is the creator and is the one we take out commandments from.From the information cited above we can see that the risk of conrcting a dedful possibly fatal disease is a reality.

In cases of elective surgery, doctors may ‘build up the patient’s blood’ before and afterward, such as with amino acids and oral or injectable iron compounds76; this can lessen any need for transfusion. Deep hypothermia (lowering the patient’s body temperature) has proved advantageous in minimizing blood loss during surgery, even on infants.78 Similarly, inducing hypotension (lowering blood pressure) can reduce the bleeding from small vessels during surgery. And probably what has proved most successful is meticulous attention to sealing off even the smallest of cut vessels. In the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, one doctor who has operated on many of Jehovah’s Witnesses said:

“There is no doubt that the situation where you are operating without the possibility of transfusion tends to improve your surgery. You are a little bit more aggressive in clamping every bleeding vessel

Why don't we?

Our blood (our life, us) is sacred and individual. It was asked us to "abstain from blood" "Jehovah asks it back from us"

“Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.” – Genesis 4:10

Now from the experts in bloodless surgery and medicine which even the American Military are studying and implementing.

"While adults accommodate a low hemoglobin level, what of children? Dr. James A. Stockman III says: "With few exceptions, infants born prematurely will experience a decline in hemoglobin in the first one to three months . . . The indications for transfusion in the nursery setting are not well defined. Indeed, many infants seem to tolerate remarkably low levels of hemoglobin concentration with no apparent clinical difficulties." —Pediatric Clinics of North America, February 1986.

"Some authors have stated that hemoglobin values as low as 2 to 2.5 gm./100ml. may be acceptable. . . . A healthy person may tolerate a 50 percent loss of red blood cell mass and be almost entirely asymptomatic if blood loss occurs over a period of time." —Techniques of Blood Transfusion, 1982.

Such information does not mean that nothing need be done when a person loses a lot of blood in an accident or during surgery. If the loss is rapid and great, a person's blood pressure drops, and he may go into shock. What is primarily needed is that the bleeding be stopped and the volume in his system be restored. That will serve to prevent shock and keep the remaining red cells and other components in circulation.

(ALTERNATIVES TO BLOOD)

Volume replacement can be accomplished without using whole blood or blood plasma.* Various nonblood fluids are effective volume expanders. The simplest is saline (salt) solution, which is both inexpensive and compatible with our blood. There are also fluids with special properties, such as dextran, Haemaccel, and lactated Ringer's solution. Hetastarch (HES) is a newer volume expander, and "it can be safely recommended for those [burn] patients who object to blood products." (Journal of Burn Care & Rehabilitation, January/February 1989) Such fluids have definite advantages. "Crystalloid solutions [such as normal saline and lactated Ringer's solution], Dextran and HES are relatively nontoxic and inexpensive, readily available, can be stored at room temperature, require no compatibility testing and are free of the risk of transfusion-transmitted disease." —Blood Transfusion Therapy —A Physician's Handbook, 1989.

You may ask, though, 'Why do nonblood replacement fluids work well, since I need red cells to get oxygen throughout my body?' As mentioned, you have oxygen-carrying reserves. If you lose blood, marvelous compensatory mechanisms start up. Your heart pumps more blood with each beat. Since the lost blood was replaced with a suitable fluid, the now diluted blood flows more easily, even in the small vessels. As a result of chemical changes, more oxygen is released to the tissues. These adaptations are so effective that if only half of your red cells remain, oxygen delivery may be about 75 percent of normal. A patient at rest uses only 25 percent of the oxygen available in his blood. And most general anesthetics reduce the body's need for oxygen

Hello Daythree,

Thank you for asking, this is the beginning of knowledge.

I have read, already some very truthful and informative answers.

It is an issue of faith, morals and ethics.

Faith: We believe what we learn from the Bible.

That it is for our own good health, that God Almighty said to " abstain" from blood.

So strong is our want to serve Jehovah, please and obey Him; in all things,

including medical decisions.

We'd rather have Safer, Healthier products / procedures;

all the while, maintaining our integrity to God's commandment.

Moral: It is inalienable human rights to Chose your own health care.

{Not to be morose, but, if a person is sick or injured severely....

you already are on a slippery slope...you dig?

We humans can and do die, from numerous ailments and injuries.}

Deciding for ourselves what is good or bad; right or wrong.

We chose to get the best health-care possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Food For Thought~~~~~~~~~~~

As one is alive, the heart continuously pumps the blood thru the body.

Always moving, being filtered, filtering what comes into the body, and so on.

When a person dies, the heart stops pumping / moving your blood.

You're dead, and so is your blood.

When blood leaves our human body, it is not moving, being circulated, filtered, etc...

It is dead blood. The blood gets stored, in a bag, on a shelf in a frig.,

Personally, I do not want to consume blood, esp., dead blood.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jehovah only approved the use of blood in sacrifices. i.e. For atonement of sins.

No Other Purpose for blood *only for being alive and sacrifices.*

Other then that, it was to be poured out on the ground.

Consuming blood, in any manner/ mode of consumption is unholy.

Ask yourself: Do I view blood as sacred?

At Lev 17:10,11 Jehovah says: "...For the soul of the flesh is in the blood..."

In educating ourselves in the Bible and medical products, procedures, etc,

Dr's have come to learn how much healthier and safer it is in not giving a blood trans.

That which was written down, centuries ago.

And lastly, Ethics: Following the spoken word, Obeying God Almighty in every aspect of our lives, demonstrates our trust in Him. Our belief that it is for our own good health.

He is the Creator. He sets the mark. As any a loving Father would do,

He tells / teaches us the way for us to go...the path to follow in life's decisions.

We are obeying the commandment of God.

On the way to life everlasting.

Now, you know, you have to do your own research /studying to be well informed,

and make your own choices, as per your own health care.

What you will/can accept also will/can not accept.

Each individual has their own limit of tolerance, allergies, reactions, limitations, etc...

Unacceptable For Christians: whole blood; red cells, white cells, platelets, plasma.

Christians to decide: fractions from: red cells; white cells; platelets; and plasma.

Acceptable*: saline solution, dextran, Haemaccel & lacted ringer's solution,

Hetastarch (HES), iron-containing preparations (into muscle or veins),

synthetic (recombinant) EPO, there is more, go research!

{{WHOO! theres a startin point, for u}}

*acceptable to me.

The main reason is it's against God laws for blood to be poured out because a life is in the blood.

Think about this also-many diseases have caused many deaths in bad blood and people who

study blood still find more. Volume Expanders are just as good in most cases for lose of blood.